Cave Canem

I last saw you at roughly 7:45 this morning. You were looking out the window as I dragged my feet across the ice in order not to slip. I waved. You could be construed as having waved. I tapped the glass. You looked right through me into the thorny bushes across the driveway, where a squirrel sat chewing a miscellaneous food object. I watched you stiffen, straighten your tail, raise your paw. I'd seen you point before, of course, but it always amazes me how well you do it, even though you've never hunted a day in your life. Do you remember that last time we went to the park together, and you ran through the grasses, got covered in mud, little, dark, thorny seed pods, and flickers of saliva? There were little rabbits everywhere, twitching their ears, chewing through their meals of nigh-indigestible cellulose, gazing at you with beady black eyes as you fell into a perfect point, a beautiful, low crouch, and you edged nearer and nearer, closer, closer, until suddenly each rabbit zipped away into the prairie grass, and the path was as if they had never been there. You were indefatigable, though, and you seemed to glow with your failures. I hung back and laughed as you stalked each one, mildly sorry for the trouble the rabbits took, but altogether too happy that you were happy. That was weeks, even months before the veterinarian pulled out the word “senior”. I wonder that it took me so much by surprise, but it was far easier to be light-hearted before that.

How long has it been, love? Six years? Seven? They blend together now, and I can't really remember. I remember some things, though. I remember that wonderful, strange first day, the day I first saw you up against the bars of your cage, your tail whipping through the air, your claws clattering against the metal. You pressed your nose to my hand when I reached through the bars. I don't think I even saw another dog that day, although they were all around. I did see a pot-bellied pig, in the pen by the door. You did too; you ignored the barking, yipping, tail-smashing excitement of the other dogs and made a beeline for the pig's cage, where you pressed your nose against the fence. The pig ignored you. So did the cats. So did the hamsters. I couldn't. We were too like each other; young, eager, perpetually hungry for something that, I, nine and you, one, had no name for. It was high summer and I remember the days like a picture book, the snapshots warm and eternally hazy, the creeks and cornfields, the paths and ponds, the forest that stretched all around that only we dared explore, we the wild, we the brave. You chased squirrels, ramming so hard against the lead that I, slighter then, fell forwards to my quite battered knees. I waded through ponds and rivers with my shoes off and my toes thick with mud, laughing at you as you picked delicately along the banks. Later, in the evening, I lay across the endless, beige carpet, you curled at my side, and I read aloud, or laughed, joked, sang aloud, from novels and poetry books and newspapers.

You were so polite, so demure those first days at home. You trailed after me to supper, lifting your paws almost daintily, as if you hadn't been rolling and running through tick-thick grasses only hours before. You lay on the old carpet beneath the table, and when the table was set and the three of us had sat down, you very quietly dozed off. You never barked, either; we wondered if you were mute for months. Looking back, I rather think we ruined you, my dear. Ah, well; good manners, as all things, were never meant to last. And at least I now, like so many others, know exactly when the mail's come.

I don't want to end on that word, “senior”. I don't want to think on its implications, I don't want to face your... what is it? Death? Failure of being? Loss, perhaps? To pull out such words on someone so alive as you seems so untrue, and yet, what else might I say? Can I say something that means more than not being able to speak at all? Perhaps my words are lost on you anyway, or perhaps it doesn't matter at all, the faceless men in lab-coats measuring your time to the last, fatal second, the shots and syringes, the cool, impersonal light of the rooms where they all ended before you and I. Oh, love; I'm tense, trying to put these things into words that sound right, words that sound right and mean something. One day, I can only hope that it is I who will shade your eyes from the bright fluorescent lights. Today, let's not think on that far-away, unfocussed hour. Here we are.